Austin artists’ drawings to be featured in fall Wright exhibit

“At the Edge”

Group exhibit

Sept. 13 – Oct. 12

Reception:

4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Sept. 20

Drawings by five Austin-based artists that push the boundaries of the medium will be featured in “At the Edge,” a Sept. 13 – Oct. 12, 2016 exhibit at the Wright Gallery, located on the second floor of building A in the Texas A&M University Langford Architecture Center.

In the exhibit, co-curated by exhibition participant Rebecca Rothfus Harrell, the artists examine spatial relationships, manipulate scale and simplify forms using a variety of media including graphite, ink and opaque watercolor.

“They challenge viewers to set aside conventional definitions of what it means to draw and to explore its many possibilities with a freshened sense of aesthetic wonder,” said Caffey.

While all the exhibit’s drawings represent visual investigations of the everyday and natural world, said Harrell, each artist has a unique artistic goal.

Shannon Faseler bases her work on climate change and its effects, including floods, glaciers and drought-affected landscapes that evoke the fragility and instability of society’s “seemingly certain” reality.

“I seek to make paintings, drawings and installations that challenge customary views of aesthetics in our natural world,” said Faseler, an art and art history lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University.

Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibits in Texas and California.

Alyson Fox gained notoriety in graduate school when her drawings, depicting an invented family history that featured faceless women, were featured in Design*Sponge, a popular design blog championed by The New York Times.

Fox, who has earned degrees in photography, sculpture, installation art and operates a thriving business designing limited-edition clothing, handmade jewelry and much more, is, “quite simply, boundless,” said Leigh Patterson of FvF, an online publication that profiles people with diverse creative and cultural backgrounds.

“Alyson’s work can be defined by her unique aesthetic, which quietly connects her projects in seamless yet subtle ways through the use of geometry, clean lines, soft palettes, rudimentary shapes and simplicity that is careful but never boring,” said Patterson.

Rebecca Rothfus Harrell‘s work is rooted in a longstanding interest in ever-evolving landscapes, human interventions in the natural world, and microscopic and macroscopic intricacies.

“My paintings and collages are explorations of form, color, structure and space, used to create feelings of surreal environments that bounce back and forth between natural and man-made,” she said.

In her work, Harrell often combines representations of minerals with symbolic abstract imagery such as arcs, rays and lines.

“When examined closely, the crystal structures in my drawings appear to be miniature worlds: microscopic terrains or cities,” she said. “I am intrigued by variations in form, color and complexity that make naturally occurring formations feel as though they are engineered objects, seemingly foreign to the natural world from which they come. Natural elements begin to feel man-made when enlarged and positioned as if they are buildings lining a road.”

Bethany Johnson‘s drawings refer to the mathematical measurement of a grid, as well as a mechanical recording process. Her images explore information loss and fragmentation.

A lecturer in art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin, Johnson investigates various methods of science, cartography, philosophy, poetry and visual art, all of which propose different systems of interpreting and recording phenomena.

“I intend my work to operate between science and poetry, at once methodical and impulsive, objective and subjective, cerebral and emotional, and always inquisitive and searching,” she said. “I seek unexpected convergences and compatibilities between otherwise disparate modes of understanding.”

Alexandra Robinson’s work is based in the connection between knowing and understanding. “As long as I can remember,” she said, “I have been interested in perception, both as an internalized mental landscape and outward connection to the land.”

Her goal, she added, is “to generate work that at once discloses and withholds, that provides small spaces of clarity as we continue on our way.”

Robinson’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group shows in galleries in Texas, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.

“At the Edge,” the first exhibit in the Wright Gallery’s 2016-17 season, will be followed by “True Believers,” an exhibit beginning Oct. 18 featuring sculptures by Ohio-based artist Mark Schatz.